Video Library

The Forests and Fish Law set in motion an adaptive management program to monitor and take steps to reduce the impact of forestry on fish, water and wildlife habitat, while maintaining a viable forest products industry. Click here to learn more.

Washington private foresters operate sustainably and responsibly to contribute to a "Working Forest." They provide not only 8 million acres of beautiful, well managed land, they provide over 120,000 jobs to residents of Washington.

Private foresters in the Pacific Northwest spend millions each year maintaining and designing road systems that will prevent erosion and water pollution. The millions of acres of forested land that exist in Washington and Oregon provide not just jobs and valuable resources to the world economy, they are working forests that provide home to an abundance of fish and wildlife.

Washington's forest landowners value the forest for fish and wildife habitat, clean air and water, recreation and for forest products. For forests to be truly sustainable, they need to support our economic, social and environmental needs. To see the forests that are providing economic activity go to www.workingforests.org.

Working forests remove more carbon from the atmosphere than unmanaged forests because they continuously produce wood products that store carbon for the rest of their useful lives. A 2 x 4 can be up to 50% carbon. Planting, growing and harvesting all the wood we can will help clean the air and reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

Harvesting and replanting trees is part of sustainable forestry. Douglas-fir depend on full sunlight to thrive. Historically full sun conditions happened after a massive windstorm or fire. Clearcutting imitates these openings, and allows you to enter the forest once in a harvest cycle, limiting soil and forest disturbance. Learn more about timber harvesting.

In certain types of forests, low-intensity fires remove the underbrush every 5 to 30 years. Over 100 years ago we began putting forest fires out, and extra forest fuel has built up, which now cause high-intensity, catastrophic forest fires. State and private landowners mange their forests to reduce forest fire risk. The greatest threat of catastrophic wildfire today is in U.S. National Forests. Learn more here.

Trees give us oxygen through photosynthesis by absorbing water through their roots, which is carried to their leaves and needles. At the same time trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The trees use sunlight as fuel to transform water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugar. The trees use the sugars to grow bigger, storing carbon in the process as wood, and release the oxygen back into the atmosphere for us to breathe. This is why sustainable forestry is good for us all, it produces a continuous cycle of growing, harvesting and replanting our forests.

Forest management occurs in working forests. In Washington, 47% of all forests are managed and 53% are not managed, as they are parks, wildnerness areas, landowner set-asides for forest buffers and wildlife, and other non-management categories. Our forests provide a multitude of benefits from economic to environmental. Wood produced from our forests are a true renewable resource.

Wood is an amazing building material. Trees mix carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to create this amazing building material. Washington forest landowners produce the second highest amount of softwood lumber in the nation. How many wood products can you think of? We can count more than 5,000.

Anatomy of a Landslide: Published on Sep 22, 2014
GEER—Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance—is a team of volunteer scientists who visit natural disasters to determine causes and help prepare for or prevent future disasters. UW geomorphology professor David Montgomery was part of the team that visited Oso and prepared a report on their findings. We hear from Montgomery about what the team discovered.

GEER Report One of the largest causes of the slide was extreme rainfall.